Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have done a great job in identifying a research gap and adopted an appropriate research design to fill the gap. The MS follows standard research paper structure and is well written.

However, language editting is required at sentence level thorught the MS. see examples below:

Line 10: The advocates of multi-competence theory argue that L2 learners’ language system is unique because of its cross-linguistic influence of both languages. 

Line 30. The former, the more obvious and practical of the two interferences has been

Line 43: can affect learners’ written Chinese (L1) when in an exclusively Chinese context

Line 52: to be bilingual as if they were L1in both languages [4-11]

Line 73: the possibility that L2 learners’ unique competence 
affecting differences to their native monolingual competence

Line 75: a paucity of research on FL effects in an L1-domi

Line 101-102:

and conjunctions without exploring in-depth the subclasses of each word class. Is it possible that while no significant differences exist in the total number of one word class, they may still exist in the subclasses of the same word class?

Line 141: The descriptive statistics and independent samples of t-test reveal

Line 194: frequency of these two kinds of nouns may lead to the total number of nouns in EMs’ abstracts being significantly higher than in CMs’.

Line 255: The results in Table 2 indicate that EMs use different classes of verbs less frequently than CMs,

Lines 274 & 275: The results in Table 3 show that the frequency of distinguishing adjectives in EMs is significantly higher than in CMs. Distinguishing adjectives cannot be modified by the ad verb很(very) in Chinese as other adjectives can. In English, adjectives

Line 335: The results in Table 6 show that EMs use both conjunctions and coordinating conjunctions significantly more often than CMs

undergraduates.

Line 381: The length of their EFL learning is shorter and the intensity 
of EFL learning is less compared to the participants of this study, who are

Line 405: The data in Table 7 may help explain the result. Although EMs use words at Level 1 and Level 4 less than CMs, they

Lines 419-422: EMs use 9 categories significantly more than CMs: namely nouns, names of persons, names of places, distinguishing adjectives, pronouns, personal pronouns, preposition被, conjunctions, and coordinating conjunctions. Conversely, EMs use 3 items significantly less than CMs: namely verbs, nominal verbs, and directional verbs. In answer to research question 2, 

The authors have done a great job in using excerpts to explain their findings; calculating and adding effec sizes of significant effects to the Results section will also improve the quality of the work. There are user-friendly online effect size calculators available for free. 

Author Response

Response to point 1: Language editing is required

We have submitted the paper to a professional proofreader and the copyediting service from MDPI to edit the language.

 

Response to point 2: Add Effect sizes of significant effects to improve the quality of the work.

We have added the effect sizes of significant effects in each table in the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper with some detailed analyses.

The title can be improved to better reflect the paper - to some extent the title was not really clear.

There is no discussion section - I found very brief discussion within the Conclusion section. It would be good to have a section here with some reflection to multi-competence theory for readers to better understand the findings.

Author Response

Response to point 1: To some extent the title is not very clear

We think the title “Effects of EFL Learning on L1 Chinese Lexis” is clear enough to summarize what we did in the paper. That is whether sustained and intensive English as a foreign language (EFL) learning can affect learners written Chinese (L1) vocabulary in an exclusively Chinese context, and we try to explain the research results with a multi-competence theory, a novel theoretical take on backward transfer.

 

Response to point 2: Discussion is brief and add a separate section of discussion

We put a brief discussion in conclusion without giving it a separate section because we analyzed the findings and discussed the reasons in section 5 “Results and discussion”. Although it is brief in conclusion, it summarized the main findings and reasons concisely and clearly. 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study pursues an interesting approach to the investigation of L1 lexical diversity in monolingual and bilingual Chinese students, by investigating this diversity in a set of MA dissertation abstracts by university students pursuing Chinese and English as their major in China. As such, that approach is original and has the potential to contribute to our understanding of L2-to-L1 transfer. However, the study suffers from a weak, incomplete, outdated and often faulty understanding of the theoretical background and a similarly weak methodological approach. The underlying data might be able to be worked up into a good contribution, but it would need very substantial revision, re-writing and engagement with both theory and methodology.

Theoretical background;

The theoretical background of this study is extremely problematic and weak. It seems to me that the authors are trying to deal with a phenomenon here of which they have a very superficial knowledge at best (this is true for both the broader topic of SLA and the more narrow question of L2 influence on L1), which has led to confusion, oversimplification and an outdated view of a range of phenomena in the introduction. The authors seem to be unaware that the phenomenon they are discussing is generally researched and reported under the term "language attrition", and this means that a very wide field of relevant research is not taken into account or reported (see for more detail below), with much of the cited work originating from a single collected volume. A good starting point for expansion of the background is the overview chapter by Scott Jarvis in the 2019 Oxford Handbook of Language Attrition. Similarly ignoried is the substantial body of work on lexical L2-to-L1 transfer in instructed settings by researchers such as Tamar Gollan, Roxana Botezatu and Judith Kroll.

The second paragraph of the introduction starts with the sentence "Most of the work has focused on the effect of L2 on L1 [1-5], however, the sustainable influence of FL learning on the learner’s L1 has not been extensively investigated [6-8]." Again, I do not understand what is meant here and what the difference is between "effect of L2 on L1" and "sustainable influence of FL". Furthermore, I do not think it is true that most participants in SLA studies were migrants to English-speaking countries, nor that research on SLA has been seen from a monolingual prism for decades – this is an extremely outdated and reductionist view.

The 'review of the literature' on lexical L2-to-L1 transfer comprises less than 20 lines, starting with a reference to a Japanese study that is not relevant in this context (as it appears to deal with loanwords). A few other studies are then mentioned briefly, with no deeper discussion of their findings. Entirely ignored is the very wide body of research on lexical L1 attrition

Methodology

The authors attempt to use statistical tests, but again appear unfamiliar with many conventions, e.g. lines 160ff.:  "The results of descriptive statistics and Independent Samples of T Test reveal that there is no significant difference in length between EM’s and CM’s abstracts (p=.195)." (descriptive statistics cannot give any information about significance, and the test is known as "Independent Samples T-Test"). Similarly, the reporting of the many Mann-Whitney tests does not follow the generally adopted way of reporting these.

The results are presented, illustrated with a few examples and, in some cases, a short interpretation, but there is not enough information given to allow readers unfamiliar with Chinese to understand the implications, e.g. the discussion on prepositions in line 325-327 and the interpretation in lines 336-338. The interpretation of lexical frequency would benefit from a familiarity by the authors of the study conducted by Schmid & Jarvis (2014, doi:10.1017/S1366728913000771) – I find it very hard to accept the conclusion that the overuse of both the most and least frequent words by the CM group means they have the ability to 'shuttle back and forth' to achieve their purpose, particularly given that the next analysis reveals no difference in lexical diversity between the groups.

On the whole, there are a lot of lengthy analyses of different types of phenomena, with very little explanatory substance. The authors appear to be casting widely for any or all differences between the groups, without an apparent hypothesis or prediction of how the L2 would affect the L1, and why. Here the concept of 'sustainability', which is very confusing in the present context in the first place, appears to have gotten lost entirely.

Organization and style

The written style of this manuscript is very problematic, starting with the phrase "the sustainable effect/influence of EFL learning". What exactly is meant here by 'sustainable effect'? I would also very much question the way in which the motivation is framed. It is possible that the authors first became interested in the phenomenon of L2 influence on L1 through their personal experience, and that they are particularly interested in the lexicon because this is what others were most critical about, but it is customary in scientific writing to refer back to the body of research on a phenomenon and locate the study in this context, not to say "I think this is important because it has happened to me".

The text is poorly organized, with much being implied or taken for granted, such as the assumption that SLA refers to immersed second language acquisition and as such stands in opposition to foreign language learning, that lexical and semantic phenomena are the same, etc. etc.

Reviewer 2 Report

It is not very clear, to this Reviewer, what this paper has to do with Sustainability in itself and why the effects in the title are referred to as "sustainable". This can be, nonetheless, a limit of the Reviewer, therefore, let's proceed with the analysis of the article. 

The Introduction is too short, it should be expanded significantly and it should explain why and to what extent the article and the experiment are relevant, highlighting, at the same time, with specific descriptions, the goal/goals of the research. 

Section 2 and Section 3 are ok, but they do not replace or do not constitute a comprehensive Literature Review. Therefore, it should be better that the Authors organize and write a section, immediately after the Introduction and before the Methodology, entitled "Literature Review", which could include the current Sections 2 and 3, and which should be considerably expanded and enhanced, to provide the readers with most of the currently available scientific literature on the topic and to show the depth of the research conducted by the Authors. 

Methodology is ok, but, also in this case, it is very short. The Authors should expand it, perhaps providing a couple of significant examples, to enhance the indispensable requirement of reproducibility of the experiment, to substantiate and validate the Methodology itself. 

The section on the Results is ok, although I am not sure about its relevance in itself, both at the level or results and at the level of quantitative significance of the analyzed sample - the experiment itself seems to show relatively self-evident results and, therefore, the issue is always the same, and continuously reverberated all over this article: its significance. The section is, nonetheless, quite punctual and, therefore, if we ignore the issue of its importance, does not require major changes. 

Conclusions are too short, they should be expanded and they should 'mirror' the (in turn expanded) Introduction, in the explanation of how the Authors have been able to conduct and develop their research project, what are the goals they have been able to achieve, what are the main limitations, what are possible hints and ideas inherent in future research, and - again - what is the significance of their study and their findings. 

The English language is relatively good, therefore no major changes are needed - nonetheless, there are some problems inherent in punctuation and in the use of plurals, which should be fixed; moreover some 'typographic' issues are evident, e.g., line 421, "[...] The following tentative conclusions may be drawn from the present research: First, though [...]", "first" should not be capitalized, and so on, and so forth. 

This paper could, nevertheless, have a place in its field of studies, but, to get there, it seriously needs to be drastically expanded and enhanced in almost all its sections, and the Authors have to think about a 'comment' of their experiment which should highlight the importance of their work in the specific field. 

Thanks.